World’s Columbian Exposition

The World’s Fair was held in Chicago in 1893. We know - it’s so cool. Covering more than 600 acres, the beautiful neo-classical buildings were built just for the fair and only temporary - but more than 27 million people came to the site (which just happened to be in Jackson Park and on the Midway) over the six months it was open. Among whole mock-up villages, Norwegian ships, and electrical masterpieces, the visitors witnessed the first ever:

• Ferris Wheel
• Commercial movie theater
• Elongated coins, (the squashed penny)
• Electrical kitchen and automated dishwasher
• Phosphorescent lamps

AND SO MUCH MORE! UChicago was being built as the fair was closing - and our football team, the Maroons, were the original “Monsters of the Midway”. The exposition is mentioned in our alma mater: “The City White hath fled the earth,/But where the azure waters lie,/A nobler city hath its birth,/The City Gray that ne’er shall die.”

(Photographs courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society, information from Wikipedia!)